America, it's time to think beyond leather for luxury car seats

"A long time ago, in (I believe) an issue of Car Magazine from the mid-1990s, the designer Gordon Murray shared his thoughts about a possible four-door follow-up to the McLaren F1. Road cars weren't really his thing. Until then, his career had been focused on Formula 1 car design, and he brought that sport's obsession with weight savings with him. Were he to design a sedan, he'd trim the interior with textile, not leather. After all, wool made fine suits and coats, Murray reasoned, and it would save weight."

"A four-door McLaren never happened during his tenure, nor has one appeared since. Murray now runs his own boutique hypercar company, which also builds no sedans. But the idea that high-end cars could use something other than leather has stuck with me, especially after driving BMW's i7, which debuted in 2022 with a premium cashmere wool interior. More recently, new EVs have experimented with interesting textile alternatives to leather. Two good examples are the BMW iX3 and the Audi A6, though neither can be ordered with these textile options in the US."

"It's hardly the first time US-market cars have had different options. Our Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards insist on features like side reflectors, which Europe doesn't need, and we maintain somewhat old headlight rules. You're also unlikely to see any of the smaller-engined versions of luxury cars from German brands being offered for North American consumption."

"We're used to American Audis being a bit different. We couldn't have the R8's laser high beam headlights or the A6's OLED animated taillights, and we're not getting the station wagon version of that car, the A6 Avant, at all. Or the A5 Avant. I reached out to the automaker to ask why it didn't think its American customers would go for the textile trim."

Designer Gordon Murray once proposed trimming a sedan interior with textile rather than leather to save weight, noting wool's suitability for clothing and weight reduction. High-end automakers have since experimented with non-leather interiors, including BMW's i7 with a cashmere wool option and recent EVs like the BMW iX3 and Audi A6 offering textile alternatives. Several of those textile options cannot be ordered in the US. Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards and other regulatory differences, plus regional marketing decisions, contribute to American-market cars lacking some features and model variants available in Europe.

Read at Ars Technica